Amateur restorations. What software to use?

[fredjones1]

I realize this is not the professional way but I have some old VHS material which is not the best quality and I was wondering what software to use to restore that material.

I have examined Gigapixel AI or VideoEnhance AI and have indeed tested them with some success.

Are they recommended or is there anything better?

[garygraham]

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First step is to get the best possible capture from the tape. Play on a good quality VCR. Pass the video signal through one of the Panasonic DVD recorders which has a kind of built in time-base-corrector if you can. That will stabilise the picture and fix any colour noise.

I suggest using the free VirtualDub software to capture as AVI, with the HuffyUV or UTVideo codec (effectively uncompressed) or with MJPEG at a high setting. Video using those codecs is easy to edit if you need to. Then use filters in VirtualDub to improve it. The Dynamic Noise Reduction filter is good. There are many good filters. For example BobDoubler will deinterlace the picture and convert the video to 50fps progressive.

Save the whole thing using one of above codecs again and finally convert to MPEG2, DivX or mp4 to make a viewing copy. 

Some people capture to straight to MPEG2 but that compromises the quality from the start and tends to be a nightmare if you need to edit anything. These days I just store the files as MJPEG and play those on the PC using PotPlayer. About two hours will fit on a 25Gb blu-ray disc and that costs 35p. 

[fredjones1]

Oh thanks. I've tried Virtualdub and it does have their usages for capture and indeed filtering and so on but what I am really looking for is software which will improve the picture and which is better than something like GigapixelAI or indeed videoenhance AI.